Presidential contender Hillary Clinton campaigning in Oakland. (Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)After Hillary Clinton’s Oakland rally, Kayla, 15, had tears running down her cheeks. She was upset. Kayla, a student at Oakland’s MetWest High School, had walked to the rally site Friday with some classmates and at least one teacher. It wasn’t far: The event was held nearby at the La Escuelita Elementary School gymnasium.
San Bernardino police officers, members of the SWAT team. (Photo: Juno Kughler Carlson, omnitrans.org) omnitrans.orgSan Bernardino’s plan to exit bankruptcy, possibly next year, cuts the pensions of 23 retired police officers who receive an unusual supplement to their regular CalPERS pension. The supplement boosts pensions to the same amount now common among police and firefighters, a standard set by the Highway Patrol in a CalPERS-sponsored bill, SB 400 in 1999.
Tour goers flank a mannequin of Dorothea Puente at the house on F Street. (Photo: Steve Martarano)Reporter’s Notebook: “If you’re interested in bodies,” the watch commander said cryptically, “go out to 14th and F streets.” I pulled up to the curb just a heartbeat ahead of a Channel 40 van. Unbeknownst to me, Sacramento’s most sensational serial murder case had started to unfold. I walked up to the excavated mound of dirt on the side of the yard and the homicide lieutenant there met me, and quickly said police had just found what they had been digging for all day: human remains. The officer pointed to a slab of concrete covering the side yard and said they would start digging it up the next day looking for more bodies.
Cover of "Go Set a Watchman" released by HarperCollins.Review: Atticus Finch, the lawyer at the heart of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been, for more than half a century, the embodiment of American virtue. The character was vividly brought to life in 1962 by Gregory Peck in a performance that won Peck the Academy Award for best actor. In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch the greatest hero ever in American film. That was before publication last month of Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman.”
On the outskirts of San Bernardino. (Photo: Steve Heap)A San Bernardino plan to exit bankruptcy follows the path of the Vallejo and Stockton exit plans, cutting bond debt and retiree health care but not pensions. Then it veers off in a new direction: contracting for fire, waste management and other services. The contract services are expected to reduce city pension costs. Other pension savings come from a sharp increase in employee payments toward pensions and from a payment of only 1 percent on a $50 million bond issued in 2005 to cover pensions costs.
Demonstrators protesting police conduct at a gathering in Capitol Park, Sacramento, October 2014. (Photo: Rachael Towne)An effort is under way to make California the first state in the nation to have its top law enforcement officer independently investigate deaths in police custody, bypassing the prosecutors in California’s 58 counties. Under the plan, the state attorney general would appoint a special prosecutor to direct an investigation when a civilian dies as a result of deadly physical force by a peace officer.
The leaders of two local pension reforms, former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, are working with a coalition on a statewide initiative to help local governments make cost-cutting pension reforms. During a break at the Reason Foundation’s third annual Pension Summit in Sacramento last week, the two men said they are “on the same page” and working with a coalition on the details of a proposed initiative for the November 2016 state ballot.
A state Senate security officer, whose residence was the scene of a night of drinking and drug use that ended in gunfire and a death, was accompanied during police questioning by a lawyer for a politically connected lobbying firm who said he was a “family friend,” court records show.
Students walk across the campus at UC Berkeley. (Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman, Christian Science Monitor, via AP)UC Berkeley – under federal investigation for its handling of sexual assault complaints and the target of a critical state audit – has a flawed system for dealing with rape allegations and an internal procedure that critics say shields assailants from criminal charges. The school is one of 55 campuses across the country being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly mishandling cases of sexual assault.
The reason, Reed says, is that the Attorney General used the word “eliminate” in describing his proposal to end the vested benefit rights of public employees. “This is the only recourse we have to correct something that is inaccurate and misleading,” said Reed of the Attorney General’s description of his measure. But Reed has a problem: He and his allies used the same word he’s criticizing the Attorney General for using – “eliminate” – when detailing his ballot measure.